This campaign season has been marked with a high degree of partisanship
and rancor in the discourse leading up to Tuesday's presidential
election. Both sides, armed with focus groups and experts, have crafted
messages gilded with oversimplifications and spurious "facts."

Logic, common sense and truth scatter like dust before the powerful and
well-financed marketing machines roaring across the landscape. My
advice? Take time to reflect on what is truly important, and let your
own intelligence and compassion guide your decisions.

Here's some food for thought before you vote:

• Democrat, Republican, Green, Independent, Libertarian, left, right,
center, liberal, moderate, conservative, rich, poor, gay, straight,
black, white, brown, male, female, pro-life, pro-choice — we're a mixed
bag, but we're all Americans.

• No individual, party or ideology has cornered the market on truth or
God's blessing.

• Dying soldiers in all countries call for their mothers with their
last breath.

• Any child killed by war, poverty, abuse or neglect is one too many.

• Fear is our worst enemy. Those who would scare us are not our friends.

• 9/11 was a tragic event. But everything did not change. The sad fact
is, too much has remained the same, or gotten worse.

• Killing innocents in any war dishonors those who died on 9/11.

• Those most distant from a conflict are always the ones shouting
loudest for war.

• War is almost always a tragic detour from the more difficult road of
peace.

• Anyone who impugns your patriotism for exercising your constitutional
right to free speech is not a patriot. In a true democracy, all points
of view are valued and heard.

• Love is the core value of the Islamic, Christian and Jewish faiths.
Only love and understanding can bring the peace and security all good
people of the world desire.

Every vote counts, and every vote should be counted.

[written by Stuart S. Light in the LA Times, Oct 30, 2004]

Feel free to comment, but as always, without using words like liberal,
left, right, or wing.
mahalo,
jo4hn